The answer is obvious but few people stop for a second to wonder about this. After all, it is not like Apple has control over all aluminum in the world. Apple were just the first to see the potential of such bodies and began to increase their orders. In just a few years Apple became the main partner of Catcher Technology, a company that possess the necessary expertise to manufacture such bodies. Apple’s production orders amount to 60% of the company’s production capacity. It takes three hours to create just a single body of this quality and, naturally, it is more expensive than a plastic body.[..]Thanks to the production scale these aluminum chassis cost Apple just as much as carbon fiber chassis cost to Sony and just a bit more expensive than plastic chassis for laptops of that price range.[…]
By now you must be wondering: why are they taking it? And if there is a short supply of aluminum bodies all they have to do is buy more CNC machinery and make all the chassis they need. But it’s not as simple as that: it takes up to a year to purchase, install and launch CNC equipment. The management also needs time and courage to allocate large funds to such a project. That is why it was so long before Apple got real competition in terms of laptop chassis. Asus purchased the necessary equipment some time ago but it began to work at full capacity just now and Asus UX21 is one of the first representatives of this work. And due to lower production volumes the production costs of these chassis are higher for Asus that for Apple. Besides, Apple is not paying for the equipment thanks to big binding contracts with their partners. [ Mobile-Review]
Manufacturing and devices